Friday, February 24, 2012

I'm immersed in the kind of thrilling background reading that makes pre-conference preparations a joy. I have two events coming up that will book-end April; the first is in Ibiza and the second in Phoenix, Arizona (with precious days in Boston, Amherst and NYC in between). Such vastly different landscapes, cultures and energies! Before returning home, I'll be spending a week in Portland OR, a day or two in Seattle and then another week in New Mexico with dear friends; we'll slip our shoes off, cross the sacred thresholds of ancient stone pueblos on bare feet, awed in the face of towering mesas and giant telescopes whose clicks and hums sound and resound for many, many miles. We will bow to night skies shot through with stars -

". . . each star has a name and a secret name;

the only word we hear from them is their light;

men will never compass in their conceptions the whole of the stars;

under a starry sky on a clear night, the hidden power

of knowing speaks a language with no name; . . . "

The Stars - Vija celmins & Eliot Weinberger

One of the places we intend to visit isThe Very Large Array,a radio astronomy observatory anchored in the NM desert. "The antennae are arrayed along the three arms of a Y-shape (each of which measures 21 km/13 miles long. . . " I feel incredibly privileged and yes, over-the moon excited at having the opportunity to do all this.

The working title for my Arizona paper is Small Points of Light. As the title implies, light will be the linking motif.Book- and web-based explorations are taking me to some truly mind-blowing places. What mysteries are contained within and around us. That boundless wonders exist in all corners of the cosmos is no secret, of course, but heavens alive, my friends (heaven is alive, my friends). . . There's no separation between earth and heaven, between 'out there' and 'in here'.

We live in an extraordinarily complex and eloquent universe. Astronomers tell us we can hear the sound of a black hole singing. 'And what it is singing, and perhaps has been singing for more than two billion years, they say, isB flat-- a B flat that's 57 octaves lower than middle C'; the stars emit and elicit music; our own sun has a voice (you can listen in to it here). New material is constantly coming to light; old premises and new assumptions are being stretched, opened up, affirmed, challenged, revisited and reshaped. Something revelatory is at work, a kind-of 'dying-for-renewal's sake'? It's happening at every moment and on all scales, from the cosmic to the microcosmic and back again. (All this buzz makes BBS a very real danger.)

In terms of the body's story - yours and mine - how amazing it is that the heart is being recognized as having its own intelligence; an intelligence and coherence that's independent of - and integral to - our brain's. Science - its nature, purpose and meaning - is being redefined. Spirituality's credence is being received and understood in new ways. Old theories and premises are being tipped on their heads; reality becomes illusion becomes reality. I find this at once invigorating, mind-numbing and humbling. (I carry a measure of wariness re; The Domain Of The Head (TDOTH), or perhaps I could say I have an appreciation for 'Ah-ha-s' accompanied by action; a wish to bring ideas 'to bear' and 'to ground'. This can be easier said than done sometimes. . .)

(Some of you will know that) Jeannette Winterson is one of my all-time favorite writers - she of the brilliant wit and shimmering imagination. For a long while, I've entertained a fantasy - Jeanette and her partner come to NZ and stay with me at 22 (my home in Dunedin); their visit coincides with cellistZoe Keating's (who would come with her hubby, cello-baby and cello, of course). . . Some of you might like to hop on over, too, for a reading, a concert or Sunday night scrambled eggs on toast? There's no harm in dreaming, is there? (I'm a great believer in giving voice to our dreams. Speaking them out loud nudges them forwards towards actualization.)

JW has written and recorded a remarkable series for radio, The Inconstant Moon.I invite you to tune in to all ten episodes - The Real Moon, The Invented Moon, The Mad Moon, The Mythic Moon, The Attempted Moon, The Women's Moon, The Earth's Moon, The Magic Moon, The Inconstant Moon and The Mock Moon.

If you need tempting, here's an excerpt from The Real Moon, the first in this series -

". . . No water. No wind. Worn mountains. Wasted seas. A rough, dry mineral sphere with a cloudless sky that is black even in bright daylight. Nothing is alive on the moon. Her landscape can be damaged by meteor impact but unlike the earth she watches over, moon cannot evolve or change. And yet, she's much more than a museum moon, a leftover exhibit of earth's boisterous past; she's a dreaming moon - the place where we still go at night against the busyness of the day. She is still the moon that children point to and animals watch; the moon who rises the tides and mysteriously lights her earth. For all the science, she is still a poet's moon.

I’ve tried the new moon tilted in the air
Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster
As you might try a jewel in your hair.
I’ve tried it fine with little breadth of luster,
Alone, or in one ornament combining
With one first water-star almost as shining.

I put it shining anywhere I please.
By walking slowly on some evening later
I’ve pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,
And brought it over glossy water, greater,
And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,
The color run, all sorts of wonder follow.

Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

&

FULL MOON AND LITTLE FRIEDA

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath -
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.

Ted Hughes

I have meandered far and wide this evening. Before signing off, I cannot resist posting this quote from Ted Hughes (from On Thinking - v. rewarding 8.43 min vid. attached):

". . . There is the inner life of thought which is our world of final reality; the world of memory, emotion, feeling, imagination, intelligence and natural common sense and which goes on all the time - consciously or unconsciously - like the heartbeat. . . There is also the thinking process by which we break into that inner life and capture answers - and evidence to support the answers - out of it. And that process of raid or persuasion, of ambush or dogged hunting or surrender is the kind of thinking we have to learn and if we don't somehow learn it, then our minds lie in us like fish in the pond of a man who can't fish. . . "Ted Hughes

"The stars: what are they?

. . . they are spheres of crystal and their movement creates a music in the sky;